


Fears...

by wannabeoppa



Series: Makoto Niijima Week 2018 [4]
Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt, Mention of Kamoshids's Abuse, mention of suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 01:05:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16029818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wannabeoppa/pseuds/wannabeoppa
Summary: “...You’re even more pathetic up close.” As if a switch was flipped and Sae’s gaze were filled with hatred once again.~O~Ren stilled, teeth gritted in anger, frustration, regret...the whole lot.“Takemi clinic... now!”





	Fears...

_ “Ryuji! Get her out of here, now!!!” _

_ ~O~ _

Disoriented, fazed, muffled. 

Makoto Niijima heard their leader cried an order but it felt so far away. 

To keep the team physically prepared for their next heist, she had recommended a quick practice run in Mementos at a day where the heat practically could melt somebody’s face off by just standing still to which affected Shadow behaviours as well. 

They were agitated, angry, wild. 

Before Thieves could get deeper into hell,  The Reaper was hot on their heels.

Makoto cannot remember what happened next. 

But if this throbbing headache could go and leave her alone, it would help her think. Maybe without this suffocating scarf around her neck was not wrapping itself tighter and tighter around her throat, it will help settle the uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. And if, only if this mask was pried off her vision, she could see where she ended up after being chased by The Reaper.

There was little to no light around her. The deafening silence of pitch black wasn’t calming, either. Could her hearing possibly be impaired by an attack from The Reaper? 

Her body does not seem to ache apart from this heavy weight weighing her closer to the ground. Her hands tapped around her body  but there was nothing on her but god, why does she feel so shackled, heavy,  _ choked? _

Her mask and scarf were flung on the ground. The soft thud and the zip to free her from the uncomfortable embrace of her suit never sounded so good until now. 

_ At least, I know I can hear something.  _

But still it was unnerving for her to stand in the middle of what seem like a literal black hole. All alone in a vastness of possible nothingness. It had always been her to fear to be around nothing where your senses were deemed  _ useless.  _

She never liked that word - useless.

As soon as she had registered her vicinity, her heart started erratically beating. 

**_Crash!_ **

There sharp sound, like a whip had been snapped by her ears and something had sparked before her eyes shone the vicinity for a split second. Panic struck her to the core. Her hands were like magnet to her ears, blocking whatever she could from the cracking sound of thunder and the intruding lightning. 

She whimpered, ducking as low as she could to the ground, making herself small. 

She felt... _ useless. _

_ “ _ Useless…” It was a different voice. It wasn’t from her.

“Useless...Just like always.” It was getting closer to where Makoto was crippled by the combination of darkness, thunder and lightning. The worst combo that the world could ever give to her, and this mysterious voice approaching her was making the sensors in her body to go full red alert. Her brain practically begging her body to get herself up, to move, to fight whatever was approaching her.

But she was paralysed. She could barely open her eyes but she knew she had to. 

The least she could do was look her assailant in the eyes before she was sliced to death or whatever.

“Sis!” 

For a moment she was relieved. Her sister knew she was deathly afraid of all things happening around her. The older Niijima, when they were younger had always tried to console poor Makoto during thunderstorms. She’d hide with her wherever Makoto felt safe in, no matter how ridiculously tight the hiding spot was. 

Though now, Sae barely even give Makoto a quick text during these kind of things - but that’s not important.

“Sis!” Makoto choked a cry as she lunged herself towards the figure before her.

“H-huh?”

She phased through her. Sae’s faux body flickered as Makoto gazed went over her shoulders. It seemed like it was Sae, alright, but her eyes...her eyes were lifeless, cold, empty. Her body transparent like a ghost.

Makoto shivered. Sae grimaced at Makoto’s presence.

“17 years and you never stopped being useless.” Her words pierced through like a bullet, stopping her beating heart at once. Sae didn’t hold that back and Makoto should be used to it right? Her sister had not once asked her to do anything but to succeed, whether it be at her manners or school (mostly school) to become as successful as Sae was.

Makoto tried, putting her blood, sweat, and tears to not disappoint the only person she looked up to and yet, her doppleganger spoke like her words were the only truth. 

Makoto knew better.  _ She does right? _

She knew damn well that wasn’t her sister before her. Sae will never let those words be voiced out...she’d think of them -  _ probably. _

“No!” Makoto retaliated. Her voice quivered, however. Tears choking her words as much as the stupid vice grip around her neck choked the air out of her little by little. 

If this was a nightmare, she better wake up. 

“I know my sister would never say that! You’re not her and you will never be her!” She practically yelled. 

Faux Sae’s grimace shifted to a grin..wicked, vile, reeking evil. 

“Are you talking to me or about yourself?” Sae chuckled. Her figure moved but circling around Makoto instead of towards her. Lightning illuminating whatever body she possessed. Every clicks of her heels, every flick of her nails against her chin dripped with venom. Her gaze indignant. 

“We both know you’ll never be me. You can never be me. You’re too weak. You’re a coward, you’re useless. Isn’t that your favourite word?” Sae’s steps halted. She towered behind Makoto whose breaths were a lot shallower compared to when she awoken. 

She was struggling to breathe, to move, to think. 

Tears brimming. “Stop…” She breathed out. 

“Remember when Shiho Suzui was abused?” Sae continued. “You knew everything and yet...” Her slender fingers pointed at the random corner in the room and immediately was illuminated by a light that came from above.

Shiho Suzui, disheveled and beaten in front of the infamous Suguru Kamoshida, eyes begging for him to quit his mistreatment on her bruised body. Shiho’s cried were inaudible but her eyes searched for refuge.

“..yet you kept your pretty little mouth shut. We both know how well that turned out did it not?” She cackled at the same time Shiho’s lifeless figure launched itself from the roof of what she had guessed to be Shujin. Re-enacting everything that happened that day. The day she watched everything fall apart. 

Makoto was too immobilised to act and help despite her power. Be it being the Student Council President or as Queen. 

“S-stop…” The ducts were released. The stream of tears flowed and soaked her cheeks but Sae did not relent. With the same gesture at the opposite side of the room was the group that she began to love. The group of misunderstood teenagers that wanted nothing but justice for the people who were robbed by the society full of corrupt and malice. 

Faux Sae walked over to the stiff presence of her friends; her teammates with the same vile smile painted across her lips. She leaned herself against who seemed to be Skull, tracing her fingertip against the jaw of the boy. “Ah, the people that you have come to love. You wanted to protect them so badly, but because of your poor advice…” 

“NO!!!!” She cried out from the heaps on the floor. 

“You had them killed.” Sae laughed.

Ryuji fell before Makoto’s eyes, blood pouring out from the hole that Sae had drilled using a bullet against his brain. The gun shot echoed around the room. It somehow took forever to dissipate in the air completely. 

This was torture. 

One by one, her fears were coming to life and she couldn’t even move a limb to stop this monstrosity. And she claimed herself changed?! A person that will do everything in her being to help people in need?! But why couldn’t she stand up and pummel this evil entity in front of her?

She grunted a cry. Another attempt to somehow convince her “sister” to cease everything.

“Stop it, please…” She beg with an airy whisper to the floor. “Please...not them..”

“Tsk..You’re pathetic. You don’t give up, yet you have nothing else to give.” Sae moved to where Joker stood. He was frozen on the spot, the barrel of the gun beneath his chin while Sae played with the trigger, flicking it softly. 

“Shame, he’s a good looking man.” 

“NO! Please!!!” Her voice was full again and body had managed to shakily propped herself inch by inch off the floor and by the time her tears and sweat stained the floor beneath her, one knee was steadying herself from the ground. Her shoulders still slumping from weight that she suddenly carried. 

These were her fears; amalgamated into one horror of a nightmare. These were all the things that she kept down in her unconscious; her worries, her regrets.

Makoto managed to change because of Ren’s help. Everybody saw that,  _ she  _ felt that change. That was why she was standing in right here as Queen, the strategist of the Thieves. 

Despite herself, she begged. “I’m the useless one...Take me...not him..”

A beat.

Then there was the familiar clicking of her faux sister’s heels on the floor. It was approaching her again. Maybe she did listen to her plead. Maybe this would redeem her, maybe this was a way for her to drive to these thoughts away -  _ to sacrifice _ herself. 

“Look at me…” There was a contrast in Sae’s voice. It was somehow soft. The venom from words dried off somehow. She seemed genuine for a moment so Makoto did what she was asked. 

Their eyes met. Makoto’s were probably red, swollen from the tears she spilled.

This was just a nightmare but why did everything felt so real? Her tears felt real, the emotions, the words!

“...You’re even more pathetic up close.” As if a switch was flipped and Sae’s gaze were filled with hatred once again.

**_BANG!_ **

~O~

Ren’s whole body was in tremors. A first for the thieves to see the cool and collected Joker tugging locks of his hair out of frustration. Sweat dripping from his temples yet face pale as a ghost. 

They somehow escaped the death grip of the Reaper by the hair. But Makoto was unfortunate. She had used herself as shield Joker when they were ambushed. 

“I should have been inflicted with Despair. NOT HER!” Ren’s guilt was driving him insane. 

He’d perch his mask over his face again and again, trying to choose a persona appropriate to help cure the girl laying on Haru’s lap.

“Ren, she’s not responding, anymore!” Haru’s breathe were quick and shallow. She had Makoto’s almost lifeless body laid against her lap as Ann and Morgana tried whatever magic they had to remove the charm that inflicted on Makoto. 

Ren stilled, teeth gritted in anger, frustration, regret...the whole lot.

“Takemi clinic... now!”

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Day 4 - Fears
> 
> Please follow [Makoto Niijima week](https://t.co/HC4PTC8F3W) on tumblr and [@makotoweek](https://twitter.com/makotoweek) on twitter for more information!


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